All this stress came at a cost. Every morning, I’d wake up in pain; every muscle in my body hurt and some days were worse than others. Like I was seriously thinking I had some awful disease and that I was doomed to be in pain for the rest of my life.

After the wake up about being a hermit as referenced above, yesterday I finally had to do something. Something to try and take care of me – so I called around to find a place where I could get a massage to see if I could relieve some of this stress and pain.

It was the best thing I’ve done for myself in a long time. I’m sore today, but that’s because I got one hell of a deep tissue massage on my sad, neglected body.

When we lived in MN, I would get a massage every 3-4 weeks. It was great and kept my stress levels down. It also was beneficial to my fitness goals because I was able to run further and push myself harder since my muscles were refreshed and not sore.

It’s been a wake up that I need to take care of myself. To clean my mental house of all the garbage that’s littering about the place. I owe it to myself to be happy and be grateful for the things I do have and not be so full of self-loathing at myself and over all the things I don’t have or are missing.

I’m 43 years old. I’m not sick. I have two strong legs that can lift weights and run. I have two arms that can lift and grasp anything. My lungs breathe easy and my eyes, while needing glasses, can see clearly. I have a sharp mind. I can hear music and I can taste all sorts of food and drink. I have good friends. I have a great family. I have an amazing husband. I may have been though some difficult times in my life, but through it all my body hasn’t given up on me. Now I gotta stop giving up on it.

This healthy body that has seen me through it all is still standing strong and I need to start being grateful and content with that body. I need to stop punishing it for not fitting the “not good enough” mold that I’ve constructed for myself. So I’m throwing that mold away with all the other garbage that’s been in my head that’s been weighing it down.

Time to love the body I have now, not the one I “should” have.

Time to appreciate everything this body can do, not what it “can’t” do.

Time to put myself first so everyone around me will get the best me possible.

I may or may not post a bunch of inspirational quotes in this post. Sorry in advance.

When life decides to throw you some lemons, you make lemonade, right? Not like Cave Johnson, though – I’m not going to invent combustible lemons.

What I mean is that when things get difficult, you need to keep yourself open to possibilities, no matter how scary they seem to be.

We’ve been in Oregon for almost two years now. But the time here hasn’t always been great. We’ve made some awesome friends here and the scenery and weather is divine, but we’ve struggled with other things. Missing family. The job market.

Speaking of jobs, Tim had been struggling to get a job in his field pretty much since we’ve moved here. He had been working remotely for the company he worked for when we lived in Minnesota, but that position eventually ended and finding something comparable here turned out to be impossible.

Combine that with some new developments in my dad’s health, we looked at the struggles we’ve been having here and we came to the obvious solution to those problems.

Move back to Minnesota.

Once we made that decision – which was not an easy one to make – Tim reached out to his network in MN and literally had a job offer in less than two weeks.

Thus begins our next adventure.

Since Tim found a job so quickly – and they wanted him to start right away – he had to move back to MN before me. He’s staying with friends until the house we’re renting (that we literally got today) is available to move in. Then, I’ll be out in April with all of our stuff and the kitties.

It’s weird having to live apart for almost two months, but I think we’ll be busy enough planning the move and getting things organized that the time will go fast.

Am I sad to be leaving Oregon? Of course I am. But when it comes down to it, we need to do what’s best for us and our family. The benefits of moving back far outweigh the downsides.

Even though winter. shudder

Besides, we said before we moved here that “if after two years we decide it’s not working out, we’ll move back.” Well, it didn’t work out the way we wanted and I don’t have any regrets. I’m glad we took the risk and had a couple of years of something new.

The good thing about living here is that we want to come back to visit often and our good friends will (hopefully) put up with us when we do. There’s so much more of Oregon that I want to explore!

But for now, we’re just going to move forward and start the next chapter in our lives.

I find myself not feeling Christmas this year. Things have just been “meh” and it’s dragging me down.

I’m still doing well with my run streak – I missed one day because I was really sick, but I ran two miles later that week to make up for it. I know it’s not a true streak anymore, but I see the miles as being important.

The other thing is that while we have the tree up, there’s nothing under it. My family stopped exchanging gifts well over a decade ago, and with my husband’s family it’s been a few years as well. For the two of us, we’ve just been picking up the little things here and there that we wanted: a couple of video games, some nice whiskey, new fleece shirt, etc. Thus, there’s nothing under the tree.

Yes, these are my mugs. Guess which one I use?

Which, in a way is fine. Christmas has always been this crass and consumeristic holiday. Don’t believe me? Work in retail between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. You’ll learn very quickly to dislike Christmas music and the idea of shopping for Christmas gifts.

We have a present-less tree, a couple of dozen peanut butter chocolate chip oatmeal cookies and a fireplace to warm up in this upper 30F weather we’re having. It’s colder here than in half of the country – parts of the country that should be buried in a foot of snow by now! Madness.

Back to my point; this year it’s all tinged with melancholy. Which puts me in a “meh” place. Which makes me want to do nothing.

I’m going to cook a special meal either tonight or tomorrow, but nothing like the Christmas spreads I’ve done in the past. No fun plans of movies or games. No cheese ball. No Bailey’s Irish Cream. Nothing.

I found this challenge on Runner’s World for the “Holiday Run Streak” – you run at least 1 mile per day every day starting on Thanksgiving Day and ending on New Year’s Day.

Today marks day seven of my streak! *dances*

I’m loving it so far – it’s keeping me accountable to do some activity every day. Last night after work, I was so mentally exhausted after working a longer than expected day I just wanted to sit on the couch with a glass of wine and veg out.

Instead, I said “you’re not breaking this streak, Sonnek!” and I put on my workout gear and drove to the gym to get my mile run in on the treadmill. (I don’t run in the dark.)

I’m not doing this to lose weight – I’m doing it to build a habit of daily exercise and hopefully restart my desire to train for long-distance running again.

I know it’s too late for you all to start, but start your own streak and have it end a week after New Years! It doesn’t matter when you start, just as long as you start. 😀

Well, maybe “fun and profit” are a little facetious. But the squishing part is real.

“Here! I’m going to put your boob on this plate, then squish it down with this plastic vice! It’s going to hurt and feel REALLY uncomfortable, but you can’t move until the machine releases you from the crushing vice grip!”

Now do that three times per breast, and you got some fun! And by “fun” I mean “not fun.”

I had to have my first mammogram at the age of 31 when I found a lump in my right breast. The news was terrifying and I had to go through a litany of other tests (including a breast ultrasound and needle biopsy) before I got the diagnosis of a benign fatty lump. After this scare, I came to find out my mom and both my sisters have had the same problems. I was all “why didn’t you tell me!?” SMH

Fast-forward to now. I’m in my 40s and mammograms are now part of the normal list of screenings you have to go through. OH BOY. 😐

Some doctors have discretion over what age and how often you need to have them, but as I already have a high risk factor – my mom had breast cancer – I needed to get one done.

Now I knew what they were going to see – I never had surgery on the benign lump as my doctor said it wouldn’t do any harm and my body would eventually reabsorb it. It has changed over time, but is still there. Thus, I was pretty confident that it would show up on this mammogram, and I was right.

I’ve had the same doctor for over a decade, so they could get my prior mammogram scans and ultrasounds, and compare the two. Easy peasy, right?

Wrong.

Apparently the imaging center deletes any scans that are more than a decade old.

WHAT?!

What happened to my medical record? Those scans are pretty fucking important, especially now that I have a higher risk of breast cancer. And now they’re gone?! WTF?

Now that my new doctor out here in Oregon doesn’t have access to those old scans, I need to go in for another breast ultrasound to not only start a new history of what’s going on – since now I lost a decade-old scan – so it can also be monitored going forward.

I’m not nervous about it, but when my mom went in and got her cancer news, she thought it was just another benign lump that she’d been getting her entire life. That hasn’t helped to stop my nagging worst-case-scenario voice from ringing in my ears. What if something’s really changed in that decade? What then? 😱

I also have to have the scans, then wait around the imaging center for them to read them and give me my results. Ughhhhh. It sucks, but I know it has to be done.